Sparrow: The Story of Joan of Arc. Michael Morpurgo

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СКАЧАТЬ was when I saw the light, a glowing light as bright as the sun, in among the branches of the trees above me. Then it was brighter still, and whiter, enveloping me utterly, until there was nothing to see except the light, and nothing to be heard either. The city had hushed to silence all around me.

      The voice came from deep inside the light, deep inside the silence, from far away and close by. “Talking of sparrows,” it said, “there was only one creature on this earth who really knew Joan. She called him Belami. He was a sparrow, just an ordinary sparrow like Jaquot; and he stayed with her all her life, almost from the very beginning, and right to the very end. He was her best friend on this earth, maybe her only friend, too. I could tell you more, if you’d like it. I could tell you her whole story, and Belami’s too. Would you like that?”

      I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no. Because I couldn’t say a word.

      “I’ll tell you anyway,” came the voice again, “because I want to, and because I think you should know all of it, as it was, as it happened.”

      I felt myself drifting into the light, into the voice.

      

      He was born in the little grey house in Domrémy, the same house Joan had been born in, but fifteen years later – to the day. There was an old nest hole high in the thatch, a safe enough birthplace for a sparrow, you might have thought. This sparrow, though, was still a fledgling, still too young to fly, but did not know it. To him flying must have looked a simple enough business – both his parents did it after all, and with little apparent effort. Lots of birds were doing it, all the time, all around him. He was determined to do it before his brothers and sisters, very determined.

      So, one morning, standing on the very edge of his nest hole, and looking out on to a world of white cherry blossoms, the soft sunlight slanting through the green of the beech leaves, he made up his mind to take off and explore this wonderland. He would aim, he thought, for the great spreading apple tree at the bottom of the garden. He fluttered for a few brief seconds on the brink, and felt the lifting power under him for the first time. He let his wings take him and float him out on the air. But at once he was falling. However hard he tried, his beating wings simply would not keep him up. The landing was bumpy and uncomfortable, though not disastrous; but he was still some distance from the apple tree.

      He was hopping and flapping his way towards it when he caught sight of the cat stealing through the long grass, slinking low, his tail twitching this way and that. Every bird, however young, knows about cats. The sparrow crouched and was instantly still, still as death. By the time he decided to make his escape, he already knew he had left it too late. For all his wild flapping he could manage little more than a few frantic stumbling hops. At the last moment he cried out, but there was no help, no escape. He was caught, caught and held fast. Death was warm darkness, and mercifully quickly over.

      When the hands around him opened, he found himself blinking up into Joan’s smiling face. “Don’t worry,” she was saying, “I promise I won’t hurt you. And I won’t let Minou hurt you either. I promise. A white sparrow! I didn’t know sparrows could be white.” There was something calming in her voice, and the sparrow lay still in the bowl of her hands, his heart still pumping with forgotten fear. A judiciously aimed stick sent the disappointed cat scampering away back towards the house. “See?” she laughed, and she settled the sparrow in her lap, talking to him all the while, till she felt the heartbeat stop its racing. “You’ve got brown eyes,” she said, “like me. But I think we’ve a lot more in common than that. We shall be friends, I know we shall.”

      One of his claws became entangled in the thick red wool of her skirt. Joan freed him carefully, gently, and stroked his head with the back of her forefinger. “They said I would find a friend,” she went on. “My voices told me so, and they never lie to me, never. Because you are beautiful and because you are my friend, I shall call you Belami. Do you like that? Belami – yes, it suits you. They told me you would come. I needed a friend, Belami, someone I could tell everything to. I wanted to tell Hauviette – she’s my best friend – but they said no. They told me to be patient – the blessed St Margaret is always telling me to be patient – and here you are, just as they promised. They promised me a friend to keep me company, one who would never betray me, and therefore not of humankind, they said. I never understood them, not until now. That’s the trouble with my voices, Belami, sometimes they’re so difficult to understand. They will speak to me in riddles and I wish they wouldn’t. And sometimes, it’s so difficult to believe what they say, even when I do understand them. Oh, Belami, the things they say I must do! Of course, I didn’t believe in them at all at first. I mean you wouldn’t, would you? After all, it’s only saints who hear voices, only saints who see visions – or witches. That’s what I thought, Belami, that’s what everyone thinks. But it’s not true. I’m no saint, but I’m no witch either; and I do hear my voices, Belami, I do see my visions.”

      She pushed her finger underneath him and felt the tentative grasp of his claws. “Dear Belami, it’s so good to have someone I can tell at last. I think my voices were right. If I’d told Hauviette she’d have thought me mad in the head, or worse. But here I am, talking on and on about myself, when I expect all you want is feeding. Bread and milk, with worms mashed in – how would that be?”

      So Joan carried Belami into the house cupped in her hands. She scooted the cat out, and fed Belami for the first time. A few days later and he was flying free. As weeks passed and he grew stronger he was able to fend for himself more and more, but he never strayed far from her and liked to keep her always in his sight. It was on the day of his first exultant flight up towards the sun. he was gliding back to earth when he saw Joan so small, so alone on the ground below. It came to Belami then that he would not be as other birds were, that he would live his life with her, come what may. She had saved him, fed him, and cared for him. Best of all, she needed him. So he would be her friend for life. He would not leave her. He would never leave her.

      It was a common enough sight around the village now, Joan with her white sparrow flying above her. Any catapult jokes met with a very frosty response. They were scarcely ever apart. Hauviette said to her once that she never knew she could be jealous of a sparrow, but she was. Wherever Joan went, Belami would follow, and more often than not it was to the spreading apple tree at the bottom of the garden. Here he would sit on her shoulder and listen to her, with half an eye on the aphids and grasshoppers in the long grass below him. When temptation got the better of him he would dart down and help himself; but he would try his best to be attentive because he knew how she loved to talk to him, how she had to unburden herself. He was there for that, there to listen.

      Often she’d tell him the same story. It was so miraculous a story that Belami never tired of hearing it. “To tell you is to remind me it was true,” she told him, “that it really happened. It helps me to make sense of everything they’ve told me ever since.” She stroked his wings – she always seemed to do that whenever she wanted him to stay with her and listen. “It was here, Belami,” she began, “right here under this tree that I first heard them – over two years ago now. I should have been out guarding the sheep and the cattle with my brothers, Pierre and Jean, and Hauviette and the others, I know that. But, to be honest, any excuse not to be there and I always took it. You watch sheep long enough at their grazing, you watch cows long enough swishing their tails in the sunshine – I’m telling you, Belami, it’s enough to bore anyone half to death. Anything to pass the time, and races are best because I’m good at races. But that day it wasn’t even my idea. Down to the river and back, that’s what Pierre said – a long way, that is. I think they thought they could beat me over a longer distance. Hauviette hates running, it hurts her legs. So she stayed to mind the sheep and the cattle. Off we went, and I won – by a mile. They weren’t at all pleased, as you can imagine. I’m just a fast runner, Belami СКАЧАТЬ